AI is poised to transform everything in marketing from ad creation to targeting and even the future role of agencies in the advertising ecosystem.

Several weeks ago, Amazon announced Nova Act, an AI model that can search for products, add to cart, and make purchases on someone’s behalf without intervention. As AI agents like Nova Act become more popular, marketers will need to target not only people, but the machines operating on their behalf, using a strategy called machine-to-machine—or M2M—marketing.

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss the many definitions of an “AI agent”, why they’re so hard to build right, and what comes next. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Analyst Jacob Bourne, and Vice President of GenAI Dan Van Dyke. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

Scam Detection uses on-device AI to flag suspicious calls, offering a powerful edge in the smartphone race.

As the relationship between data and AI deepens, both push- and pull-based marketing strategies will benefit.

In today’s podcast episode, we dive into how Apple Intelligence will move the AI usage needle and discuss which companies are poised to shape the future of artificial intelligence. "In Other News", we cover Bank of America’s recent outage and the risks associated with digital banking. Join host Marcus Johnson and analysts Jacob Bourne and Gadjo Sevilla for the conversation.

Over a quarter (26.6%) of US internet users will use generative AI at work next year, according to our June 2023 forecast. Many applications will come from tech companies embedding AI into existing workflows, like using Microsoft Copilot for productivity or Google Gemini to create images. To stay ahead of the AI innovation curve, marketers should seek out and experiment with new applications, according to experts at the BrXnd NYC AI in marketing conference earlier this month. Here are four key takeaways from the event.

Intuit Mailchimp used AI to create a B2B marketing campaign focusing on the “clustomer,” the amorphous and diverse audience brands must reach with ads. The resulting ad performed in the top 5% of Ipsos ads, a success which Intuit Mailchimp CMO Michelle Taite attributed to the team’s willingness to experiment with AI.

AI agents are coming—“It’s not years. It’s months,” said Adam Buhler, senior vice president of creative technology at Digitas.

38% of US adults think AI can customize content people see online better than humans can, but 62% say the tech is the same as or worse than real people, according to Gallup and Bentley University.

“The misconception in my mind is that you can ignore [generative AI],” Vincent Yates, chief data scientist of consulting firm Credera, said at Advertising Week New York 2023.

Most companies worldwide either haven’t adopted AI and machine learning (ML) yet or are still in the research phases. In North America, 42% of companies haven’t implemented AI or ML, while 22% are rolling it out and 21% are scaling up the technology, according to a June Workday survey.

Most market researchers do not think AI will take over completely, according to SurveyMonkey. Some 38% of US market researchers think that AI will take over data visualization completely, but more people (46%) believe that AI will assist while humans remain in control.

“[AI] really does raise the bar in terms of what people are going to expect from you,” our analyst Jeremy Goldman said on our recent “ChatGPT and Generative AI” panel. As AI matures, it will become more specialized, automating mundane tasks, ushering in personalization, and changing the way consumers, retailers, and marketers use the internet. Here are eight predictions for that not-so-distant future.

Global spending on AI-centric systems—including the software, hardware, and services for these systems—will increase 27% this year to reach $154 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Nearly half (49%) of US adults are interested in AI-powered online search capabilities, per Morning Consult. Other popular applications of AI technology include recipes, roadside assistance, smart assistants, and product design based on consumer trends.

More than half of US adults prefer human-generated content across a broad range of media, according to an Ipsos survey. For news and photojournalism, for example, about 70% want to see human-made content. But for marketing websites and movies, US adults are slightly more open to AI-generated content.

Of Microsoft’s $198 billion in revenues last year, only about 6% came from advertising. Could a revamped Bing help build out this revenue stream? It’s hard to imagine, but not impossible. Here are five charts that look at Microsoft’s latest ad moves.

AI chatbot ChatGPT and digital portrait generator Lensa have seen a lot of hype over the last couple of weeks. There’s every chance their buzz is a passing fad. What’s not a passing fad? The use of generative AI in marketing, which will increase significantly over the next few years.

Last week, Shutterstock announced a partnership with OpenAI, integrating the DALL-E 2 text-to-image AI generator into its platform.